Mike > Recent Status Updates

Virtually, A Cat by Jody Lynn Nye: 2/5 Very basic, completely forgettable.

The First-Born by Brian W. Aldiss: 2/5 Another story that could only be worth reading if you're interested in the scientific conceit presented.

Scheherazade and the Storytellers by Ben Bova: 3/5 Would've been a 4, if not for the unbelievably cheesy ending.

Wheelan doesn't care about understanding what it's actually like to be poor - he just wants to understand everything through numbers. Taking the humanity out of injustice is a good way to justify it.

Also, saying that misfortunes of the poor don't benefit the rich is indefensible. The world has enough resources to feed everybody, but we don't do that, because the rich would rather have luxuries.

How to Get Back to the Forest by Sofia Samatar: 5/5 Excellent use of perspective and voice to contribute to worldbuilding. This is a really creepy and well-written story.

Help Me Follow My Sister Into the Land of the Dead by Carmen Maria Machado: 4/5 Another example of excellent worldbuilding, voice, and formatting. The story is a little short and flaccid, but it's still an interesting read.

Ace is basically the only good part about this manga. He's hilarious, and I'm glad he's here. But other than that, the artwork is confusing and lazy, Alice is a boring character with ill-defined motivations, and the worldbuilding is vague and done through infodumps. I'm starting to think that cutesy, girly manga just isn't my thing - I like it in theory, but I've never read one that I actually enjoy.

The Stainless Steel Rat and the Pernicious Porcuswine: 2/5 The story was confusing and hard to follow, and the premise was incredibly ridiculous.

The Errand Boy by Frank M. Robinson: 2/5 Tedious story that seems to be nothing but vague, uninteresting buildup.

King Rat by Gene Wolfe: 3/5 This story did have a lot of potential to be good - I loved both the writing and the characterization. But the plot was meandering and flimsy, and the worldbuilding made no sense to me.

A Preliminary Assessment of the Drake Equation... by Vernor Vinge: 2/5 This story is basically one long, boring infodump, with character development only done in broad strokes.

Warm Sea by Greg Bear: 2/5 I feel like Bear thinks this premise is a lot more original than it actually is. Admittedly, the writing is pretty good, but it's a little lazy and pretentious.

I hate that Remy's romance with Gabe is being treated as this good, romantic thing. Even ignoring the fact that Gabe may have tried to sexually assault her earlier in the novel, they just completely lack chemistry. Honestly, the way they interact isn't at all different than how Remy interacted with Asher.

Shadows of the Lost by Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre: 1/5 This story is obnoxiously preachy, not very well-written, and the main character is boring. There's essentially no point to this story without the theme, and the authors really lack insight into what they're writing about. It's such a basic and obvious exploration of a potentially interesting topic. This is the worst story so far.

Okay, I guess we were approaching a climax. That was actually a pretty well-written sequence - it feels like it was plucked from a much better novel. If it were properly built up to, I could even call it entertaining.

Tales from the Spaceship Geoffrey by James Gunn: 2/5 I wanted to like this, because the worldbuilding was so well-executed. But the story is just too flawed otherwise - the characterization and writing are both extremely dull, and the plots are essentially told in massive infodumps. Maybe if just one of the sections were expanded to a full short story, I could bear it. But as it is, this is too tedious.

I'm 80% in, and we don't even seem to be approaching a climax. The plot has barely progressed from when I was at 40%. I hate this so much.

I'm working on Tales from the Spaceship Geoffrey by James Gunn. I feel like I should be hating this, since it's basically a bunch of massive infodumps. But while it's not great, the stories are surprisingly entertaining. There's some very nice worldbuilding.

A good author can incorporate characterization into scenes that also build up the tension of the novel. Jackson has no idea how to do that - every time she wants to develop the romance, the plot grinds to a halt. It completely kills the tension, and it doesn't help that the romance is so badly-written.

Sleeping Dogs by Joe Haldeman: 4/5 Excellent worldbuilding and characterization, even if the story was a bit weak.

Gates (Variations) by Larry Niven: 2/5 This is classic sci-fi in the worst sense, where there's no way you could be invested if you don't care about the scientific idea it explores. This could've been worse - it was at least well-written - but I formed no attachment to any of it.

This is what Kiesha'Ra would've been like if Amelia Atwater-Rhodes were completely boring. This is just as convoluted as an Atwater-Rhodes novel, but it lacks the sense of scope and the imagination that made the convolutedness natural and acceptable.

Von Neumann's Bug by Phyllis and Alex Eisenstein: 2/5 The idea isn't very inventive, and the ending is extremely anti-climatic. Maybe if there had been some connection to the protagonist, this would've worked better, but as it is... it's not awful, but I have trouble imagining how someone would find value in this.

Y'know, I don't have anything inherently against love triangles, but this is one of the worst I've ever read. This book is so badly-written - it's hard to believe this is the same person who wrote If I Lie.

Shoresteading by David Brin: 3/5 The prose and worldbuilding were both excellent. But Brin tries to stuff too many ideas into too small of a space, and the result is overwhelming and difficult to follow - by the time the story ended, I had no idea what was going on.

And the plot has sputtered to a sudden halt, leaving us to focus on the horribly-written character interactions. I have long since stopped caring about Asher or Gabe - Remi needs to dump both of them and solve this problem with Lottie and Erin.

If I had one problem with Shoresteading, it's that it feels more like a very condensed novel than a real novella. There are tons of ideas stuffed in here, to the point where it gets hard to follow.

Gabe just almost sexually assaulted Remi! And then, in the very next scene, she wonders if SHE'S a ho! Holy god, this love triangle is getting creepy.

Still working on Shoresteading. I am really enjoying this story. It's very well-written, and the plot is pretty interesting, if a bit slow.

I will say, as a plot, this story isn't all that bad. I just have a lot of trouble getting much emotional investment in the characters.

I'm working on Shoresteading by David Brin, and it's pretty good so far. I wish there were less infodumps, but the world is pretty interesting, and I like the main character.

The problem with Remy and Asher's romance is that there's no analogue for it in real life. It's a decently-written conflict, but it can't possibly result in themes that are applicable to anyone. It doesn't help that Asher is kind of boring. Still, the main story has potential to work, so we'll see where it goes.

"Prejudice is usually irrational."
Holy shit, this guy has no idea what he's talking abut. Prejudice is usually an amoral but rationally calculated device of bringing direct benefit to oppressors. White business owners benefit from having black people in prisons, men benefit from making women take care of the kids, ect. An economics book that doesn't understand this and discuss how capitalism feeds it is useless.

Not very far in yet, not much to say so far.

Fredrick Pohl - an author I've never heard of and know nothing about. I'm basically reading this anthology exclusively for the one Neil Gaiman story included - apart from that, this is likely going to be a very tedious read.

Wheelan has zero understanding of how pollution works. The fact that he writes about a carbon tax as a solution to pollution entirely in terms of how it affects car production demonstrates his laughable ignorance on the matter, considering that five oil tankers pollute more than every single car in America. A carbon tax would fail, because the rich would find ways around it, and they're the ones actually polluting.